Prey 2 Countdown Grows More Mysterious - UPDATED

The "Alien Noire" countdown now sports plenty of official-looking Prey 2 imagery, yet Bethesda Softworks says it has nothing to do with the site.

Things are heating up at the Alien Noire countdown site we stumbled across earlier this month. The clock is ticking away, obviously, but the site is also now topped with the Prey 2 logo, as well as those of Bethesda Softworks and Human Head Studio, and even offers an option to subscribe to... something. The source code has been updated as well, with a message stating, "Tommy needs your help with a stranded human who wants to go home."

Yet while the site has taken on an ever-more-official look, Bethesda Softworks insists that it has nothing to do with it. "I don't know what that is or who is doing it," a rep told Joystiq. "It's not something we're doing."

So who is behind it? The whois, as we've already noted, leads to "The Collective," with an address in Cherokee County, Oklahoma - Tommy's old stomping grounds. Subscribing to the site rewards you with an image of a heavily-populated alien world with the filename "exodus," which isn't exactly helpful either. As for the image itself, you're looking at it. Anyone recognize it?

One way or the other, we'll find out what's going on soon enough, because the countdown hits zero in about a week. You better believe we'll be watching.

UPDATE: The Alien Noire site is now pumping out "daily secret" images to subscribers and while I don't claim to be able to tell that they're photoshopped (even though I've seen quite a few shops in my life) there's definitely something "off" about them. The low resolution makes it difficult to be sure but the images look a bit to me like a mish-mash of elements lifted from different games, which of course makes the whole thing even more mysterious. Who would bother - and why?

Three images have been sent out so far, and three more will presumably be sent out before the countdown hits zero. Perhaps the forthcoming images will make things clearer, but in the meantime, thoughts?